Gar
na
cha

The first documented reference to this grape dates back to 1321: a sentence from the Parliament of Paris mentions a shipment of 1,387 barrels of “half griece” (a name which may have been used for muscat and malvasía wines which came from Greece) and “half varnacie” (garnacha) wine, the type of wine that the Venetian merchants distributed around Europe from the year 1204. It also appears as vernache, gernache or grenache, the name the French gave to the well-known fortified wine at the end of the 18th century.
Valier, in 1882, stated that garnacha was the most modern wine planted in Aragón. He asserted that at the beginning of the century it was used as a dessert grape and in mid century, thanks to its resistance to mildew, its cultivation spread to the Aragón region, occupying 85% of the Cariñena vineyard district at the end of the century. Valier explains that before the phylloxera plague garnacha spread through the south of France under the name of grenache, bois jaune and bouge de Alicante. He describes it thus: ‘A beautiful and very sturdy vine, with abundant leaves of a light green colour on both sides, Its clusters are well spaced and suspended in the node of the third internode, so that few of them touch the ground’.

Manso de Zúñiga states in 1905 that ‘the garnacha was imported into La Rioja from Aragón after the Rioja vineyards were infested by powdery mildew in 1854’

In 1914, García de los Salmones mentions the growing of garnacha in various Rioja districts and highlights Quel as one of the main places in our region.
Marcilla, in 1942, describes garnacha in these words: ‘Upright bearing, adult leaves hairless, medium or small in size and light green in colour. Abundant flowering but the setting of its fruit is never complete, especially on Ruprestis de lot rootstocks. The grape ripens late and achieves a lower level of alcohol and higher acidity than the Madrid red wine. The colour of its wines is not very intense and they have a marked tendencu to turn to that “onion skin colour” of rancid wine in their ageing’.

Larrea in 1978 lists the agronomic characterístics of garnacha: ‘It grows well in stony ground and also in clay soils, but especially it needs well ventilated exposures, on a slope, with a relatively hot climate. It suffers from attacks from downy mildew and insects but is resistant to powdery mildew. It has a good yield although it is quite prone to coulure of the flower (setting failure)’.